Newly enlarged with a last part, called_ A WINTER
NIGHTS VISION, _being an addition of such Tragedies, especially
famous, as are exempted in the former Historie, with a Poem annexed,
called_ ENGLAND'S ELIZA. _At London. Imprinted by Felix Kyngston_,
1610.
This huge quarto of 875 pages, all in verse, is the final form, though
far from the latest impression, of a poetical miscellany which had
been swelling and spreading for nearly sixty years without ever losing
its original character. We may obtain some imperfect notion of the
_Mirror for Magistrates_ if we imagine a composite poem planned by
Sir Walter Scott, and contributed to by Wordsworth and Southey, being
still issued, generation after generation, with additions by the
youngest versifiers of to-day. The _Mirror for Magistrates_ was
conceived when Mary's protomartyrs were burning at Smithfield, and it
was not finished until James I. had been on the throne seven years.
From first to last, at least sixteen writers had a finger in this pie,
and the youngest of them was not born when the eldest of them died.
It is commonly said, even by such exact critics as the late Dean
Church, that the _Mirror for Magistrates_ was planned by the most
famous of the poets who took part in its execution, Thomas Sackville,
Lord Buckhurst.
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